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Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#141

Post by mothballed »

close04 wrote: post #131
mothballed wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the government went out its way to ban bearer shares, bearer bonds, numbered anonymous bank accounts, large denomination currency, anonymous companies, and all the other methods of anonymous banking. Seems they were having trouble "taking it away by the justice system." For the same reason government across the world have pressured or banned exchangers of monero.

GP added the "by the justice system" where OP only said "can be taken away". Both digital and fiat currency can be taken away from you through courts, legislation, trickery, or coercion. Crypto is surrounded by vast amounts of misinformation, misdirection, or misunderstanding. So you get these myths and generalization propagated through lack of education. "I heard crypto is completely anonymous", "I heard crypto can'…

If you toss a bag of cash in a hole buried under a grave in Timbuktu, or toss a bitcoin seed phrase in there. Cover it up, leave Timbuktu back to your western country. Then vow to die before giving up the location (you can claim torture or whatever works, but many people in history have decided to be tortured to death without giving up the information). You can be essentially 100% assured it will never be taken. Possible with both fiat and crypto, though you'll be digging a bigger hole to bury an upward amount of dollars, yet crypto is infinitely scalable with the same size hole.

From a black and white viewpoint the possibilities are the same but the practicality is a bit different (then realize with crypto the hole might only exist in your mind). Maybe the government has control over your body but there is some victory in not letting them have your assets even if they take your life and without having to destroy the underlying value.

Personally I think a cleaner distinction is bearer assets vs titled assets. Both can be taken but bearer assets can be made impractically difficult to seize, especially against the masses at once, whereas titled assets (like bank accounts and deeds) can be taken by the government trivially (ex: in US, IRS can freeze without even a warrant) and at mass scale quickly.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#142

Post by felixgallo »

rglullis wrote: post #87
pjc50 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, I think there's an argument that the existence of that backup, or at least its marketing, might of itself encourage people to make the institutions fail so they can profit from it.

That's a weak argument. If the institutions can collapse because a few powerful people can work against it, then the institution has already failed in the first place. Trump and the general rise of Populism is not the cause of the fall of Western democracies, it is a consequence .

You're going to have to show your work on that one. Western democracies are suffering not because they are failing, but because they have been chipped away at for decades by fanatical right wing billionaires intent on eliminating taxes and securing their place in a perpetual oligarchy.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#143

Post by thinkingtoilet »

himata4113 wrote: post #45

Cryptocurrency is very much a double edged sword, on one hand it enables people to transact monetary value bypassing for-profit operators such as western union and paypal as well as hinders corrupt government institutions from confiscating or otherwise devaluing what you own. Of course this also allows people with harmful intentions to do the same, bypass centralized systems that keep fraud in check, mitigate theft a…

>bypassing for-profit operators such as western union and paypal as well as hinders corrupt government institutions from confiscating or otherwise devaluing what you own

There are transaction fees so you're still paying someone. And the it's not government taking what you own, it's scammers!

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#145

Post by deepvibrations »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #83

I do agree that there's a huge amount of fraud and scams, and obviously that's only got worse since the President of the US started being part of that ecosystem. But at the same time there is also finally real finance happening on-chain too. Backpack launched a SpaceX token at IPO that can be moved between on-chain and your brokerage. I think Coinbase announced their on-chain equity offering will have the same capabi…

Is it possible that these companies simply fork the existing protocols and use the technology without buying into the existing "crypto world"?

Yes it won't be quite so decentralised, but say a number of major banks all spin up a node for say a JPM asset trading blockchain, it becomes semi-decentralised, so they have some advantage of a using a more secure shared ledger, but they also retain more control and thus probably more acceptance within banking, as big players can keep a walled-garden of sorts.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#146

Post by over_bridge »

danielvaughn wrote: post #117
alehrs wrote: post #50

I've been deep into crypto for years and I was a big stablecoin supporter. I was fascinated by the tech and I still am. But everything outside the tech itself is just trash, scams, and gambling. I've come to believe that "pure" decentralization is neither practical nor particularly convenient. The only real use case that makes sense to me is giving people in developing countries access to a stable currency they can a…

I got into crypto in 2017 when I came across the phrase "money is a technology". That idea fascinated me. But fast forward several years later, and it's obvious that money might be a technology in the sense that it's a tool, but more importantly, money is a culture .

Or if you read Sapiens you'll know money is a story we tell each other. You can't literally do much with a coin or bank note or numbers on a screen but as long as we all believe it has value, it does. It becomes part of the culture, as you say.

Crypto also has to tell a story about why it's valuable. There was a lot of anti government rhetoric and fear mongering (from libertarians) but the public never really believed the story was true. It was a lot of FOMO.

NFTs failed completely to sell their story but crypto is still hanging on among its supporters. AI is telling a similar story about the value of tokens which is being well received

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#149

Post by lmz »

kakacik wrote: post #110
fn-mote wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m ignorant of this but it seems wrong. 30% lost in fees?? Can they not manage to open a dollar-backed account somewhere? Also: > being stored in a currency that might lose a majority of its value overnight I for sure put crypto in this same category. “Stablecoin” or not.

Sounds more like social security avoidance, or general taxation avoidance. Which country will take 30% cut from incoming foreign transaction? The highest combined fees I could find are for Sub-Saharan Africa and those are below 10%, supporting tax/social evasion claim. Could be completely legal but when folks don't provide details its often safe to assume the worse scenario when it comes to money, taxation and screwi…

I believe some countries e.g. Cuba have different "official" vs "black market" exchange rates. A 30% difference wouldn't surprise me.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#150

Post by lmz »

tialaramex wrote: post #95
pjc50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a "vice" thing. Vices are things which match this pattern like alcohol or drugs: - many people don't indulge at all - many people indulge occasionally to no real harm - some people indulge in a way that makes a short term recoverable mess - a few people get addicted and are unable to stop. May or may not also be harmed at this point, but this tends to lead to cumulative harm - a few people really mess up trag…

One thing that does vary is whether "it's not harming me" works out. Booze in particular has massive social consequences, drunk people harm non-drinkers not just themselves. I've never worried that degenerate gamblers leaving a slot machine parlour at 2am will attack me - but outside the bars that's definitely possible which is why they're required to hire security and have police contact

Some gamblers will inevitably run out of money and resort to crime.
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